I finish up the tower and have it mostly filled with water by the time Apricot gets back. In honor of her, I made the tank in the shape of an apricot. The pixie glared at me for a moment for that before laughing it off.

Feeling a bit like the monkey king, swinging around up here. I ask Blackthorne to extend to the ground and lower myself down by having him retract back to his normal size.

"Hah! Nice trick." Apricot laughs when I touch down.

"It was that or try to slide down the water pipe in the middle." I chuckle. "Let's get back to the front, I can feel Amelia worrying from here."

"Heheheh." She snickers. "You aren't wrong; she nearly jumped out of her skin when you walked off the edge like that."

"Ah, Blackie had me. Didn't you boy?" I hold up a large chunk of the cocoa wood for him to munch on. "Much better than that silly *Jingu Bang* that the Monkey King carried around. And, I'm not going to be mean and shrink you down small enough to tuck behind my ear either."

"Huh?" Apricot looks confused.

"Oh, sorry, it's an old, old story from a country far to the east of mine. In it, the Monkey King asks the Dragon King for a weapon that is equal to his strength and receives a magic staff, *Ruyi Jingu Bang*. That staff can change its size shape and weight, but isn't nearly as cool as Blackie here."

"Amelia, he's talking books." Apricot laughs before flying back to her perch.

"I'm not sure you'd like this one." I warn her before she gets her hopes up. "It's a bit weird even if you understand the culture it came from. I'm not sure how accurate the translation I read was, and to be honest, I skimmed most of it."

"I'd still like to hear more about it." I can't deny that cute look on her face.

"Well, it starts with a monkey born from a stone." I laugh at the absurd look everyone gives me. "Look, I told you it was weird..."

I go on to give a basic breakdown of Journey to the west, or at least as much of it as I can remember. I read it when I was much younger and solely for its connection to Dragon ball. While I'm telling that very abridged summary, I'm also getting the next batch of blight treatment ready.

"So, yeah." I shrug after finishing the synopsis. "I'm hardly doing it justice since all I read was a poor translation over a decade ago. But it's still kind of a weird story."

"You can say that again." Adriana laughs.

"I have to agree." Amelia nods. "Even so, I'd still like the chance to read it."

I nod letting her know it's in my library. "It looks like the next batch of oil is almost ready to go. How far along are the spray teams?" I ask Apricot.

"Getting pretty close to the wall." She replies. "Another one or two of these double loads and we should be seeing them. They were happy for the extra sprayers, by the way. The farmers have been following along and helping out where they can, and were excited to get more turns with the sprayers."

"I should work on my steam then, that way I can try to pick up the slack when the fire brigade starts to flag." Making the baking pearl is taking up most of my mana, but I can spare enough to at least practice my steam conjuration.

"We're not going down just yet." Nicole has a fierce look when she says that. That look gets even fiercer when my trickle of steam starts to match and then outpace her contributions. "How?" That one word seems to escape her lips without conscious volition.

"I had a bit of help from a friend." I smile over at the pixie that just shored up my casting. "I'm very much at the limit of what I can do at once, though. I should have asked for some cookstoves or fire mages to heat the baking pearl for me, that's using up most of my mana."

"Erick said to just ask if you needed anything." Apricot hops into the air. "I'll let them know after dropping off this next batch."

"Thanks, Sweetie." I swap out the barrels so she can get on her way. "We couldn't do this without you."

Even as tiny as she is, I can still see her blush before she flies off. It looks like she takes praise about as well as I do.

"I'll focus on drawing the oils out directly, again." Amelia hides behind her hair. "I got kinda caught up in my book and let it slip."

"Heheh." I chuckle at her bashfulness. "At least you can manage, I basically have to change the way I think before I can even begin to try."

"What are you guys talking about?" Adriana asks, but her whole team looks curious.

"Oh, I modified the draw water spell to work on any liquid." I explain. "You just need a strong image of what it is you're trying to draw out. My visualizations work really well on some things, but not at all on others."

I go ahead and show them the spell and set out a barrel of vinegar for them to practice on. Adriana picks it up right away, but the others aren't far behind. From the feel of their magic, they were already familiar with the draw water spell.

"There's another modification that works on gasses." I add once they've all managed to draw some vinegar from the barrel. "But, maintaining a mental picture of something nebulous like that can be difficult, not to mention dangerous. And, unless you're a skilled air mage, or an alchemist, about all its good for is pranking your friends by sending farts their way."

"Please don't tell Bat about that." Maddie speaks up for the first time, the other women nod their heads in agreement.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

"You guys are never going to let him live that down, are you?" Guthrie comes to the man's defense. "It's not like he knew you'd get stuck in a carriage together the day after eating a bunch of beans."

""..."" The three of them just glare at him.

"They're sending some people over to help cook the stuff." Apricot declares when she returns. "They should get here before the sprayer teams since those are going around the walls."

"Thanks, Sweetie." I blow her a kiss as she settles back down onto her perch. "And, thanks for reminding me to ask for help. This should shave a couple hours off of the whole effort." She smiles back but doesn't reply, so I start stepping things up a bit to match the soon to be increased workflow.

First off, a few more bags of compost get spread around to increase the growing area. Next, I back off the steam production and put everything into the plants and, finally reach that meditative state where I become one with the action.

Everything I'm doing speeds up and grows more streamlined. Now, I'm not just keeping up the demand, I'm far surpassing it to create a backlog. At least, until I sense Amelia master drawing the oils directly from the plants.

"Adriana." My voice sounds far off even to my ears. "Amelia has the oils, please boil the pearlash now."

Her reply was lost to me as I sink further back into the zone, but she and her team do as I ask. They are soon joined by others, some of whom feel familiar, but the rest who do not. Two of which attempt to copy me by drawing co2 from the air into the now numerous pots of boiling pearlash.

"Focus on your breath." I surface enough to recognize Lemmy and Delainey from the alchemists’ guild. "Clean air in, stale air out. Now, draw that staleness from the air. Yes, that's it."

Before I sink into the magic once more, Apricot flitters closer. "We need more sprayers before you disappear again." I shape raw magic into a pixified version of myself just long enough to give her a kiss before fulfilling her request with a laugh. "Nng. Stupid, sexy, lunker and your stupid, sexy, magic."

Her grumbles just fuel my laughter, but it dies off soon as the stupid, sexy, magic takes hold of me once more. I lose track of time until Amelia shakes me on the shoulder.

"Sorrel, Baby. That's enough for now." She breathes into my ear. "It's time for lunch, everyone needs a break."

Blinking as I come back to myself, I first steal a kiss from her before looking around. The sun has already moved past its zenith, and all around us are exhausted looking people. They may be exhausted but happy, pride-filled smiles adorn their faces.

"We already have more than enough oil to spray the fields twice over." She answers my questions before I can even think to ask them. "And, nearly as much baking pearl." That just leaves the bacterial soup, which I've been making as needed since it's best used right away or kept in the stasis of storage.

"I didn't turn any cotton plants into trees this time, did I?" I reply with a laugh.

"That was some impressive magic." Delainey approaches when Amelia rolls her eyes. "I've read about mages reaching enlightenment during big castings, but I've never actually seen it."

"Hmm?" I look at him in confusion since I don't feel particularly enlightened. "Do you mean the meditative state I was in? Anyone can do that."

"True." He smiles. "But entering a flow state... well, it's a bit different when magic is involved."

"That's where it gets the name from." Apricot takes over when his explanation stalls. "You know how nature magic just does what you want? Well, when a mage enters that state, all mana flows with them, responding to their will."

"Cool." I bob my head and take a plate from one of the helpers that are handing out food. "I'm just glad we got most of the work done. It'll be nice to have an afternoon where we can sit and relax."

"I'm not sure you even know how to do that." Amelia snorts.

"Well, if you want to take over heating the water..." I open. "Then we could finish making enough baking pearl for the next time they have to spray."

"Lemmy's Leavener." The old alchemist interjects.

"Don't listen to him." Melanie adds with a laugh. "I told you he'd call it something stupid."

"I don't care what it's called." I mumble around a bite of my sandwich. "I just needed something that rolled off the tongue better than potassium bicarbonate."

"Then Lemmy's Leavener it is." The old man crows.

"Whatever it’s called." Delainey says in a pacifying tone. "I'm not sure a second spraying will even be needed. Word has been spreading that the first fields to be sprayed are already showing a significant improvement."

"Even so, it's probably best to have it and not need it." I reply. "Especially with all the extra pearlash we were given. And, now that we're done with the oils, I should be able to write a bit more of my chemistry knowledge down."

"See, I told you that you couldn't just relax." My merchant teases with a smug smile.

"The quicker I fulfill these promises." I say while pulling her closer. "The quicker I can fulfill the one I made to get you a tutor." She ducks her head with a blush, but not before I see the happy smile plastered on her lips. "Speaking of..." I take a moment to create several copies of what I wrote out this morning. "Here's the first installment, it only has the basics of general matter though."

I started with the periodic table and everything I could remember about each element, their isotopes, and allotropes. Then came the basics about subatomic structure and the bonds between atoms and molecules.

Proton, Neutron, Electron, and Photon translated fine, but the Quarks, Leptons, and Bosons didn't, making me think that they haven't been discovered yet. So, I just left them out, but included a note that even the building blocks of the building blocks of matter are made up of even smaller building blocks themselves.

I was surprised that most of the elements did translate, including several radioactive elements. This world must have its own version of Madam Curie out there somewhere.

And, even more surprising, when I think about stuff like mithril I get a translation from the gift of tongues skill, and it doesn't feel like some fantasy either. I have no idea how that fits in with regular matter, but I have no idea how conjured matter works either.

"This..." Delainey is the first to speak, but that one word is all that he manages to get out.

"The periodic table isn't the only way to group matter, but it's what my people use and what I was trained in." I explain. "There's more to it than this too, but I was starting to get a headache. So, I'll have to update all that later." I don't know the atomic weights off the top of my head, and sure wasn't going to try calculating them.

"What do you mean?" Melanie ventures.

"Well, in my language each element has a one or two letter abbreviation." I explain. "Take hydrogen and oxygen. In my language, they would be shortened to *aitch* and *oh*. So, if you want to write out the composition of water for example, in Varecian it would be something like h2o because there are two hydrogen and one oxygen atoms. But, you all should decide on the abbreviations"

"I'm seeing a lot of stuff on metals here." Edsel says while reading over Melanie's shoulder. "Could I get a copy of this too?" I make another one and hand it to him.

"Now, I'm sure all of you have many, many questions." The alchemists look like they're about to descend on me en masse. "But, like I told Melanie, I need time to sort my thoughts out and get everything down on paper. So, I need to ask you to please be patient."

"I think we can do that, right everyone." The way Delainey says that makes it clear that it’s a statement not a question. "Sorrel has already given us much to go over -just the pages on carbon alone are fascinating- and, I think his idea for us to pick the abbreviations is a good one. I want suggestions ready to vote on for the next guild meeting."

That did it. The alchemists broke into various groups and almost instantly started arguing about which element would get which abbreviation.

"Thank you for that." I give the man a full bow.

"No, thank you for this." He brandishes his copy of my notes.

"Mhm, just try to remember that when I get to the really complex stuff." I let out a chuckle with just a hint of evil laced into it. "This is just the tip of the iceberg, as my people would say."

***